General Cycling Discussion - Wild In The Streets! Cycling Stories

Just to give you a start - and taste - of the crazy topic I'm opening up, this thread is to write stories - true - of the people you've met as a result of being a cyclist. And how it happened.

I'll start -

Yesterday afternoon I crested the meanest, nastiest, and steepest ascent in my local area. I often strike out for this place. It's next to a college and has a nice bench and a nice picnic-table. And I've seen some of the wildest cast of bicycles and the people who ride them. I gotta learn to always carry a camera. Well yesterday was no exception. Read on.

Behind me, from my viewing-stand at the picnic-table, I heard some strange pseudo-conversation. So I turned around and looked. There was a rather plump and perplexed woman with her old no-name bicycle. She was chatting away with herself(? - you'll see) while dropping things and trying to read some piece of paper she was waving. And she had a big, wire basket. It appeared she was trying to install this basket - in the parking-lot of the college. And not too successfully. In that I always carry a tool-set to help cyclists in need, I walked over to her. I tried very hard not to let my jaw drop.

Dressed in a puffy pink blouse and exercise-pants, she had a very notable beard - like 4:00 o'clock shadow from three days ago. She kept talking to herself, and now to me, as she told me what the problem was. She had a Wald basket in need of being attached to a brand-new rear rack. This was installed very well - the rack that is. So I walked back over to my PUCH and fished my Topeak Alien II multi-tool from my cache, thinking to myself that this Alien II was an ironically perfect tool for this one.

I helped her pick up the bolts and nuts and what-nots she'd scattered about on the pavement under our feet. I looked at the instructions. And, with some missing-parts, managed to get the basket attached enough to ride with - but in need of parts that had vanished into...The Twilight Zone. I lit a cigarette. And I explained to her(?) that without these parts, she wouldn't fly, Orville.

I suggested she go to the shop that sold her this contraption and ask them to find the parts and help her assemble same. The old hybrid-cross-mixte she was on fascinated me - so I took some mental snapshots of it. Cursed myself for not having my digital camera. And made a graceful run for it.

So.....I RAN INTO THE BEARDED-LADY!

(Got the guts? Write it up!)

I recently posted this elsewhere. I ran into him again, helped him with some brake issues. His front pads had worn through to the metal, and had cut nearly through his front rim, managed to get his rear brakes working sort of, so he could stop. Also gave the guy my patch kit. I've not seen him since then and I'm hoping he's alright, that rim was in really bad shape. A wreck with that much weight rolling over you would sting.



I recently met a guy on the KATY/MKT trail with FOUR kid trailers attached to a Trek mountain bike. He had a dog with him, along with nearly 400lbs (he guessed, seemed about right) of stuff. He was homeless (home free?,) and claimed to of been all over the US. He had a machete, gardening tools, wood working tools, a shovel, and lots of other random stuff. He was a bit odd, to put it lightly. His bike was a mess, black goop everywhere. He had been using lard to oil nearly everything, along with WD-40, light oil, motor oil, etc. I passed him two days later and a trailer had a tire fall off so he was down to three trailers at that point. His name is Joe, bike's name is The Preacher, and he's one of the weirdest conversations I've had of late.

I got married in August of 2007. On valentines day of 2008 I blew off doing something romantic with my wife to go meet a group of people from my city for a bike ride they were advertising on the interwebs. During the ride I ended up splitting a PBR tallboy with some girl I'd just met.

A few days later she found me on here and we ended up becoming really good friends even doing the double date thing with our respective spouses If I hadn't blown off my wife on our first married valentines day I'd have never made such good friends.